Your initial statement implied that the woman that got conned is a fan. I don't think that she is, I think that she is just a regular consumer. You do agree that not all consumers are fans, so I don't see what the problem is.

Yes, I definitely was calling her a fan. And I definitely think she is an Apple fan. Regardless of whether she is or not, that's how I was presenting her in my OP, which, I remind you, was a joke to begin with (so comic license is at work here too!). The "problem" is your ensuing reply was essentially a non-sequitur to my comment.

This page-turning patent is ludicrous. For something to be patentable, it has to have novelty. There was nothing novel about an animated page turn at the time Apple filed its patent. iBooks was not even introduced until mid-2010. By that time Stanza with its very nice animated page turn had already been in use for years and years.

I agree with those who say the patent won't stand up in court. The U.S. patent office is probably incapable of vetting patent applications in order to determine whether the technology/process is novel or has already been included in another patent. They leave it up to costly litigation to sort these things out. As some have suggested, there may also be some monkey business going on here too.

Adding an SD card is different as it raises the cost and size of an item. And it discourages people from using a money-making cloud-based resource.

Home page widgets have no such considerations. There is no valid reason not to put them in, so I suspect someone else already has patented them for mobile devices. That's why Apple has yet to add them.

As someone with experience with electronics design, sd cards really do not greatly effect price. When making a device like the iPhone it already has most the capabilities to handle SD cards so the only real cost is for the SD card slot itself which cost pennies. Relying on SD may be cheaper than using more NAND flash, depending on how it is implemented

The only reason why Apple does not include an internal SD card reader is because that would simply cut into the profit margins. They wouldn't be able to up trade you to go with a higher capacity model, and they also wouldn't be able to sell you an external SD card reader (yes, apple makes sd card adaptors.)

A Samsung official has reportedly denied claims that the company has raised the price it charges Apple for its iPhone and iPad processors by almost 20 percent. Speaking with Korean newspaper The Hankyoreh, the unnamed official added that prices were agreed upon at the beginning of each year and "aren't changed easily."

As someone with experience with electronics design, sd cards really do not greatly effect price. When making a device like the iPhone it already has most the capabilities to handle SD cards so the only real cost is for the SD card slot itself which cost pennies. Relying on SD may be cheaper than using more NAND flash, depending on how it is implemented

The only reason why Apple does not include an internal SD card reader is because that would simply cut into the profit margins. They wouldn't be able to up trade you to go with a higher capacity model, and they also wouldn't be able to sell you an external SD card reader (yes, apple makes sd card adaptors.)

This. You have to understand Apple's corporate mindset. All their hardware is designed to lock users in to their system, that's the whole point. And it's working for them apparently.

The only reason why Apple does not include an internal SD card reader is because that would simply cut into the profit margins. They wouldn't be able to up trade you to go with a higher capacity model, and they also wouldn't be able to sell you an external SD card reader (yes, apple makes sd card adaptors.)

It's amusing to watch someone who claims to have experience with electronics design claim that the only reason to leave out a SD slot is greed.

Tell us, electronics designer, how much space does a SD card reader take up in a phone chassis?

It's amusing to watch someone who claims to have experience with electronics design claim that the only reason to leave out a SD slot is greed.

Greed may not be the only reason, but considering Apple, it was probably very high up on the list. The mico SD slot is roughly comparable in size to the SIM slot required for any GSM or UMTS phone. On a phone as big as the iPhone 5 there is probably plenty of room, since many comparably sized competing products have both a SIM and an SD slot, and sometimes even a user replaceable battery. Hellmark was almost certainly correct when he said that the obvious reason to leave out a micro SD slot was because it is much more profitable to gouge the customer for a 16GB to 32GB internal FLASH upgrade.

Greed and price gouging are probably some of the reasons that Apple is doing so poorly in the biggest smartphone market in the work.